I could feel our pursuers behind us, the grim certainty of their presence driving me on. Eventually the walls of the gorge widened and grew less precipitous, as the creek flowed back out into a valley. After a few more minutes we came to a break in the bank, and grabbing a thick vine pulled ourselves out onto a flat rock.
‘What now?’ Ben asked. In the light of the trees he was bruised and bloody, his hair plastered against his head.
I looked around. ‘We need to keep moving, put some distance between us and them.’
He nodded, then took a step forward and winced.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘My leg.’
Looking down I saw the fabric of his pants was torn, the exposed skin beneath it bruised and bleeding.
‘Can you keep going?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ he asked, and for a moment I saw a smile play across his lips.
‘Not if you want to live,’ I said, surprised by the way his kindness buoyed me.
He pointed upward. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s the Southern Cross. If we keep heading south we should reach the Wall.’
We stumbled on. The forest seemed endless, indifferent. After a time I slowed down and slipped an arm around Ben so he could lean on me, uncomfortably aware of the grey look of exhaustion on his face, the way he winced each time his foot touched the ground. But after an hour or two even that was not enough.
‘I need to rest,’ he said, coming to a halt.
I felt him sway; tightening my arm, I steadied him.
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Can you . . . feel them?’ he asked.
The tone of the whispering had shifted again, growing less urgent. ‘I think we’re safe for now,’ I said.
He shook his pack loose and slumped to the ground. Taking his water bottle from his pack, he slipped off his mask and drank deeply, then he offered it to me. I sat down beside him and took a mouthful. For a long time he didn’t speak. When he did his voice was different: quieter, softer somehow.
‘Why didn’t you leave me back there?’
I didn’t reply.
‘If there’s a chance this vaccine could work, you have to get back.’
‘I know.’
For several seconds I was silent. Finally Ben said, ‘What is it?’
I shrugged. I knew I should feel more confident but in fact I was frightened, heartsick. ‘What do you think will happen if it works?’
He hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll find a way to use it.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘Things won’t be like this forever.’
‘What do you mean?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but our reconnaissance was part of a larger operation, one that may alter things quite soon.’
‘Alter things how?’
‘I don’t have all the details, but they’ve been building an installation in the Transitional which contains a new weapon system, something that might be capable of beating the Change or even destroying it completely.’
I looked at him in amazement. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know the specifics, but it’s some kind of airburst technology.’
‘And you think it will work?’
‘It has to,’ he said. ‘And if it doesn’t we’ll find some other way.’
As he spoke I heard something in his voice I had not heard before: an edge of certainty.
‘I have to sleep,’ he said.
As Ben fell asleep beside me I sat staring out into the forest. Even through my exhaustion I knew the Change wasn’t far behind us. After everything I had seen it was easy to lose hope, but Ben’s words, his kindness, had made me wonder whether there mightn’t be a way through. When at last I slept it was without dreams, without fear. And when I awoke it was light and there was a figure standing in front of me.
Matt.
14
I started, barely keeping my balance as I scrambled upright and away from him. He was not alone: ranged about behind him were another half-a-dozen of the Changed, dressed in rags like Matt.
He was standing very still, his eyes fixed on me, his expression blankly curious, as if he were regarding an insect. ‘Hello, Callie,’ he said.
‘Stay back!’ I said. Next to me Ben jerked awake, his hand groping for his gun.
Matt glanced at Ben as if he were irrelevant. I glimpsed Ben’s gun in the hands of another of the Changed. Next to me Ben sagged a little and I knew he had seen it as well.
Matt tipped his head on one side, his lips pulled back to reveal the glint of his too-sharp teeth. ‘Why do you resist?’ His tone was curious, almost child-like.
‘Because I know what you, or whatever it is that’s in you, does to people.’
‘We need to understand what is happening, what you are doing. The one you knew as your father’s understanding was . . . insufficient.’
I tried to answer but words would not come. Although I had told myself I never wanted to see him again, the thought of my father, or whatever was left of him, being extinguished was suddenly unbearable. ‘What did you do to him?’ I said at last.
‘What was necessary,’ said Matt expressionlessly. Hate curdling in my gut, I lunged at him, but Ben grabbed me and held me back.
‘What about the others?’ Ben asked.
Matt turned to him. Even through my shock and fury I was struck by the way he moved, the precision and focus of it. It was like watching a predator. ‘They are no longer relevant.’
Next to me Ben went stiff. I looked away, unable to meet his eye.
‘What are you going to do with us?’ I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady.
Matt looked at me, his face expressionless. ‘Take you with us.’
I opened my mouth to object, but just then four of the Changed stepped forward in unison. Moving with the same reptilian speed I had seen in the city, two grabbed my arms while the other two went for Ben. He lashed out at the first, but before he could break free the other collided with him, sending him into the grasp of the first. Ben threw himself back, trying to land another blow, but the second shoved him again then twisted his arm behind his back, sending him crashing forward onto his knees with a sharp cry of pain. A split-second later he was lying face down in the dirt with both of them on top of him.
‘No!’ I shouted, lunging forward, only to be yanked back hard. ‘Leave him alone!’
On the ground Ben struggled harder, his face contorted with pain.
‘Please,’ I said to Matt. ‘He doesn’t know anything. You only need me.’
Matt exhaled, a soft hiss. ‘He will come,’ he said.
One of the others stepped forward and unwound a length of plastic rope that had clearly been salvaged from a hardware store or somewhere similar. Kneeling beside Ben she wound it around his wrists and bound them tight. Then she approached me and did the same. Matt watched without speaking, his body entirely motionless. Uncomfortable under his gaze, I glanced at him a few times but he did not react. Finally they dragged Ben to his feet and he limped forward, wincing at his injured foot. At some unseen signal Matt blinked back into motion, turned and we moved away into the trees.
At first I could hardly think, the shock of capture leaving me dazed and shaky. As we stumbled on I had to fight the desire to run at Matt, hurt him in some way. I knew it was pointless: my hands were secured, first to each other and then by a cord to the Changed behind me, yet as I watched him moving ahead of me I felt my hate harden into something colder. Tightening my jaw, I lifted my head and stared ahead, doing my best to study our captors.
Besides Matt there were six of them. All adults, all with the cat-like eyes and soft phosphor dusting of the Change on their skin. The first was a young man with dark hair, dressed in the stained remnants of grey suit pants and a white sh
irt. Because he held the cord that was attached to my wrists it was difficult to see him, but once or twice I glanced back and saw he had beautiful amber eyes. Next was a woman, perhaps in her thirties, barefoot in a tattered floral dress, her long dark hair falling down her shoulders. Ben’s captors were also a man and a woman: the first an older man with a grey beard, in ruined chinos and T-shirt, whose bare feet made him look like a castaway; the other a woman, dressed in faded jeans and a torn T-shirt, one arm covered with a sleeve of tattoos, her thin frame muscled and taut. The remaining two were both men, perhaps in their twenties, one dressed in a construction worker’s reflective gear, the other shirtless in old jeans, meaning that when we entered the shadow the soft glow of the Change was visible along his spine and on his chest. Despite their earlier speed they now moved with the steady focused pace of the Changed.
Sometime in the middle of the morning we came to a creek. Matt stepped to one side and indicated the water.
‘Drink,’ he said.
I stepped forward and was about to lower my face when I caught Ben staring at me and realised he couldn’t take off his mask or drink the water without risk of infection.
‘Go ahead,’ Matt said again.
I hesitated, then leaned forward and greedily swallowed the dark water. When I finished I caught Ben watching the bearded castaway out of the corner of his eye. I drew level with him.
‘Don’t be fooled,’ I said quietly. ‘You’ve seen how fast they can move.’
‘Where do you think they’re taking us?’ he asked in a low voice. Above his mask a bruise was forming where he had hit the ground, but despite his pallor there was a steel in his voice I hadn’t heard before.
I thought back to the city, the nest. ‘I don’t know.’
Ben began to reply but before he could speak Matt shot us a look, the movement terrifyingly quick, his expression blankly avid, like a cat’s in the moment before it strikes, and we both fell silent.
Up close to the Changed like this, it was possible to see the detail of their bodies, the degree to which they were not just altered but metamorphosed. Seen from a distance the phosphor that moved on their skin looked like markings, but up close their skin was in fact translucent, the lights moving within them like blood or some kind of fire.
Yet it was not their skin that was most astonishing and unsettling, but their eyes. The way the light moved in their opaline depths was at once so deep and yet so blank. As I watched Matt I forced myself to confront the fact that the person he had been was genuinely absent, replaced by something I did not, could not understand. It couldn’t be an accident that the individual whose body and mind had been chosen to be sent after me was somebody I knew, somebody I loved. But was that because the Change thought I would be more vulnerable to somebody I knew? Or was it because some vestige of the Matt I had known remained within him? The first possibility was vile, the second so awful I couldn’t think about it. I knew my father spoke of the Change as if it had a mind, as if its actions were those of an intelligence that could think and plan, but what did that mean? Was it one thing, an individual like Ben and I, or was it more like a hive, many minds acting as one? And what did that even mean? I had seen birds flocking, videos of schools of fish, but how could they be said to be intelligence, how could they be like this thing that talked and thought and planned? No, it must be something else again, something even stranger, yet trying to imagine it made me feel as if nothing I thought was certain was real, as if I too were dissolving. Worse yet was the thought of Gracie, washed away somewhere in its immensity.
Around noon we came to a halt in a small clearing. There was no discussion about the decision, we simply filed into the clearing and each of the Changed turned to face Ben and I.
‘Why are we stopping?’ I demanded.
‘You will rest,’ Matt replied.
Beside me Ben was bending over, his arms on his legs, his face flushed.
‘How much longer do we have to go?’
Matt turned away, as if the question were irrelevant. ‘Until we arrive.’
I glanced at Ben, who shook his head slightly as if to say it didn’t matter. Finding a dry patch, I sat down on a fallen branch, the manoeuvre surprisingly difficult with my hands bound behind me. Ben sat down next to me with a wince.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked. The wound on his leg seemed to have opened again and there was fresh blood leaking down his boots.
He nodded. ‘Just tired.’
I forced myself to look up. Matt and the others were sitting or standing in a loose circle in the clearing. Although Matt was watching the two of us with a fixed intensity, the others seemed to be gazing into the middle distance, their eyes focused on nothing in particular. Unable to bear Matt’s stare, I shuddered, looked away.
‘What is it?’ Ben asked.
‘How do you think they know what to do? Are they under his command or are they all part of some kind of collective?’
‘The latter, surely,’ Ben said thoughtfully. ‘Why would they have a command structure?’
‘So they’re all connected to each other all the time? Or it’s in them all at once?’
He considered this. ‘I suppose. Although I wonder if they can think independently too?’
Ben was quiet for a moment. ‘That’s him, isn’t it? The one you said you knew.’
I nodded.
‘Is there anything in him you recognise?’
‘He has his face,’ I said, unable to control the cold anger of my voice. ‘That’s all.’
The two of us were silent for a while.
‘What do you think they’re planning to do to us?’ asked Ben.
‘I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re going to get away before they get us there,’ I said, my voice low, my eyes trained on Matt.
*
We walked for the rest of the afternoon, until Ben and I were exhausted and filthy. Despite the heat Matt and the others seemed not to falter or tire, yet as nightfall came they turned aside and led us through the trees to a clearing where they indicated we should sit down.
With our hands tied it was impossible to drink. I told Matt we needed water, and without a word the woman with the floral dress reached into our packs and, taking out our bottles, held them first to my lips and then to Ben’s. Up close I could see she had a scar beneath her clavicle; remembering my father’s missing scar, I wondered whether this meant she was one of the originals, a body that had been a person rather than one of the things grown in the pods.
The young man with the amber eyes took food from our packs and held it to our lips while we ate. Once he was done he returned to the edge of the clearing and sat down with the others.
‘What now?’ I asked.
Matt turned to me. ‘You sleep,’ he said, not taking his eyes off me.
Next to me Ben had already lain back. Transfixed by Matt’s stare and unwilling to give him the pleasure of knowing it had defeated me, I held his gaze.
‘You will not try to escape,’ he said. ‘We will know.’
I didn’t reply, just snorted softly and lay down on my side. I could see Ben’s back in the dark, hear his breathing.
The ground was hard yet, even so, I was asleep within minutes, my body falling into a sleep haunted by terrifying dreams. Deep in the night I woke to the sound of thunder somewhere in the distance, the smell of rain. For a long while I lay listening to the sleeping forest, the cries of unknown creatures in the branches. In the darkness I could feel the Change all around me, its presence stretching not just out but inward, a web that shifted and pulled. I tried to block it out, to sleep again, but just as I felt unconsciousness rise to take me I heard one of the Changed cough, the sound strangely incongruous.
I had forgotten the cough when I woke in the dawn light. Matt and the other Changed were alrea
dy on their feet, seemingly unfazed by a night on rough ground. But when amber eyes knelt down in front of me to help me drink, I noticed the skin under his eyes was bruised and his face had an ashen cast. Whether he – or the Change – was aware of it wasn’t clear – certainly he gave no sign anything was abnormal – but as he stood up again he faltered a little, his breath escaping in a wheeze.
It rained for most of the morning, drenching us and plastering our clothes and hair to our bodies, so by midday, when the rain finally stopped, we were miserable and exhausted. And once the rain had passed, the heat returned, more intense than before.
We stopped sometime in the early afternoon. While we slumped beneath a tree amber eyes took out our canteens and let the last few sips drain into our mouths. I caught Ben looking at me as amber eyes replaced the empty canteens; neither of us spoke.
Once or twice during the afternoon the Changed let me drink from streams and creeks, but Ben, still afraid of infection, would not, and as we stumbled on he looked weak, dizzy with thirst. When evening came he sat back against a tree and closed his eyes.
‘You have to drink,’ I said.
Without opening his eyes, he shook his head slightly. ‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘But you can’t go on like this.’
He opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘There’s a good chance I’m already infected. But if I drink the water it’s almost a certainty.’
I nodded. Somehow the fact Ben wasn’t prepared to give up made me feel more hopeful.
‘If they ever untie our hands I have a treatment patch in my pocket. I can use it to filter some water, drink that.’
Nearby the Changed were settling down for the night. As the day had gone on, the one with the amber eyes had seemed increasingly distracted, although the others didn’t seem to have noticed. But now they were sitting, Matt was staring at him, his face unreadable in the pale light of the glowtrees.
Although I was exhausted it took me a long while to fall asleep, but just before dawn something woke me and I sat up in the half-light. Ben was snoring quietly behind his mask. Turning I found myself looking directly into the eyes of tattoo woman as she sat, back against a tree, eyes open in sleep. I started. In sleep the open eyes of the Changed were like a void, the person within emptied out. Taking a breath to steady myself I looked away again and was surprised to see Matt standing on the edge of the clearing in which we had set up camp staring down at two bundles on the ground. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but then I realised the shapes were actually two of the Changed lying on their sides.
The Buried Ark Page 9